Editorial: Clarke schools should think about stimulus

Posted: Tuesday, May 12, 2009

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It's hard to fault Clarke County School District officials for laying out plans to use $6.4 million in federal economic stimulus funds earmarked to provide help to low-income children and students with disabilities in the 2009-10 school year. It's hard to imagine two student populations with more pressing and defensible needs in terms of staying in step with classmates.

And looking at the situation with an admittedly cynical eye, it's hard to imagine where money could be better spent in boosting the standardized test scores and other performance benchmarks upon which school systems are judged in this so-called era of accountability for public education.

As things stand now, Clarke school officials - with the approval of the local school board and the state school board - could start as soon as July 1 to hire a host of new employees who would be paid with at least part of the $6.4 million in stimulus funds. Currently, a plan for the federal dollars developed by Clarke County School District staff calls for the creation of 55 positions, including 30 academic interventionists. These interventionists would work with small groups of elementary school children.

Other stimulus dollars could be used to expand Project Grow. Currently aimed at elementary school students who repeatedly misbehave or commit serious offenses such as bringing a knife to school, the infusion of federal funds could expand the initiative - a 15-day out-of-school program that includes monitoring by counselors and psychologists - to middle schools.

Notwithstanding the apparent worthiness of, and need for, the outlined programs, a disturbing aspect of the proposed uses of the stimulus dollars is that there appears to be no great concern about what happens in the 2010-11 school year with the federally funded efforts aimed at improving student achievement and behavior.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the interventionists, Project Grow and other stimulus-underwritten programs and positions created in Clarke County schools for the 2009-10 school year produce quantifiable results. Will the federal government be willing to continue to underwrite the programs? And if that's not the case, will the state government or the Clarke County Board of Education be willing to continue the programs?

More to the point here, will federal, state and/or local officials be willing to ask taxpayers - who are, after all, the source of revenue to all three levels of government - to continue funding the programs? Given the fact that next year is an election year, and the possibility that the economy might remain in the doldrums for some time to come, "no" seems the most likely answer.

It may be true that the best option for the Clarke County School District is to use the $6.4 million in stimulus funds. But no one should believe the current plans for the money are going to make an appreciably lasting difference in the county's public schools.

Before the current plans are carved in concrete, it would behoove Clarke school district officials, including school board members, to start dialing up and e-mailing state and federal education officials, and this state's elected officials serving in Atlanta and Washington, to find out whether it's possible for the money to be repurposed to cover equipment purchases and other expenditures more appropriate for what seems, for all intents and purposes, to be a one-time infusion of cash.

It would be incredibly shortsighted, not to mention wasteful, to use the money on programs and personnel that, while worthwhile, likely won't be around for longer than one school year.